A third of Lufthansa flights have been disabled Photo Credit: Reuters/Channel 2 News

It seems that El Al is not the only airline going on strike. Yesterday evening (Tuesday), Lufthansa pilots launched an enormous strike, grounding a third of the airline’s planes. The two-day strike is aimed at improving the pilots’ salary conditions.

The Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) pilots’ union has waged an extremely lengthy campaign against the German airline company’s management in a dispute that has led to 14 previous strikes. However, the current strike is the worst one to occur yet: 900 flights have been grounded and about 100,000 passengers have been affected by the strike.

Lufthansa’s management has called for negotiations with the pilots, which the VC has rejected until it receives a better proposal as a basis for talks. The VC is demanding that 5,400 pilots’ salaries be retroactively raised by 3.7% from 2012, yet the company’s management is not willing to budge agreeing to raise salaries by 2.5% by 2019.

Lufthansa’s management estimates that this massive strike will cost 7 to 9 million euros a day and they claim that the strike is not logical.